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User blog:SgtNG/Interviewing Ian Underwood On All Things Infinity Wars!
//WIP/// -- Will there be a rematch button? Currently, Best of 3s and sideboards are just in Ranked and invite games, so there is no rematch button for those modes as it wouldn't fit. -- Are there any more details on how sideboards will be implemented and options to disable them? Sideboards are a part of any match that goes beyond a single game, there isn't any option to disable them unless the match is a single game. As for how sideboards themselves will work, Teremus is going to be doing a live stream soon showing off sideboarding, and he'll be explaining everything about sideboarding then. -- Is spectator mode planned for before or after IW 2015's Release? As Spectator Mode is still pretty far away, I can't really give any details about when it'll happen, sorry. More details will be available once we're finished development of it. -- Will there be an option to have in-game recording without the need of an external program? That's certainly something that we're looking into. Fortunately in Infinity Wars the gameplay lends itself to storing a fairly small list of actions (well, small from a computer's perspective), which then can be easily recreated. Hopefully this means we'll be able to one day create a really good replay system. -- How does lightmare view the current balence in the game? Overall, we're pretty happy with it. There are a few outliers in terms of power, but that will always be the case. From a design perspective, we've realized after Ascension that there were certain strategies that didn't have good checks and balances available to players (there are very few cards that a deckbuilder can include to counter strategies based on non-combat damage, for example). This is something we're looking at fixing in the next set. Our general design philosophy with balance is to let the metagame flow naturally, with us only interfering and nerfing cards if the card is far too strong. If one strategy becomes dominant for a long time, and metagame isn't able to shift in response to it, it usually points to there not being enough options to counter that strategy. Recently, we've particularly held off on any card changes because we knew that sideboards, a major self-balancing tool of the metagame, was coming soon. -- Are the Exiles and the Overseers considered full factions? At this point, we feel that the Exiles identity is well fleshed out, so yes we consider it a “full faction”. The Exile identity of chaos and randomness is not one that was ever expected to appeal to everyone, but with some cards in Ascension they've certainly caught on. The Overseers, at this point, are not fully fleshed out. This is pretty expected, since they've only had one set. In future expansions we'll be looking at exploring the faction into some more mechanics that'll make them into a more multi-faceted faction, at the moment they feel like a strong, but one-dimensional faction. This was intentional, as when we introduced the Exiles, for a long time they felt like an interesting but useless faction, as their base of power wasn't present from the inception of the faction. -- Members of the community are wondering if you could shine more light on what exactly the forging mechanic is? Unfortunately that's another feature that's too far off for me to talk about publicly. -- Are there still plans for Core and 2HG formats? And if so, can we expect any news on them in the near future? Two Headed Giant is something I'm definitely interested in, but the infrastructure for allowing more than 2 players in a game is something that's still in development. I hate to keep saying the same line, but we've learned it's a pretty bad idea to talk about things that are still far off in development: new features can take a long time to create, and change a lot in development. -- The android app was announced a while back, but since then, it has been relatively quiet as to what progress has been made. Will the android app include all the features of the full game? Since we're a pretty small team, we have to focus on one or two major features at a time. Mobile is something we originally wanted, but since then we've realized it's a bigger mouthful than we expected. It is something we're actively working on, I was actually just in a meeting with an expert mobile consultant earlier today, but we can't promise any sort of timeline. Most of our focus is currently on the desktop development, and making sure we have a great core game. We do want the eventual mobile app to include all the features of the full game, but in the interest of getting something playable in the hands of players, we'll most likely be making the core gameplay first, then adding to the app over time. -- Old modes such as hyper and epic were removed a while back. Since then I have received messages on the wiki asking if there's still a way to access them, or if there are plans to re-implement them? At that time, we removed Hyper and Epic because we felt that they didn't particularly add much to the game. Of course, there were people that liked the formats, but on the whole they were very underplayed. What we've discussed in the office is making occasional featured game modes that players could queue up for, and if so, Hyper and Epic would probably make a comeback. I wouldn't expect it any time soon though, at the moment there's higher priority features that we think more of the playerbase is looking forward to. -- Are there any plans to address new players and make the game more friendly to those just joining? Absolutely. In fact, that's something we're constantly considering and making improvements to. As a business, it's very important. I think it's something that we've made great strides in recently, and a new feature that we're going to be releasing in the next update is going to be absolutely huge for new players. I won't say any more than that, or Teremus will get mad I'm stealing his thunder, but it's definitely a game changer! -- Do you plan on releasing the alt arts for cards eventually in the in-game store or via some other method? Yep, that's definitely on our bucket list of features. Ideally, we're also looking into how the community can get involved with alt art: I know firsthand there's a lot of talented artists among our fans that would love to draw some animated cards. Maybe Steam Workshop is the ticket? Of course, it all comes with the same caveat I have to say when it comes to any upcoming features: I can't give details until it's far along in development, sorry! Category:Blog posts